4-year-old receives Mensa card

IRVING - Priya Purewal's parents knew they weren't dealing with a typical toddler when their daughter started taking over bedtime story-reading last year.

"She'll read storybooks to us rather than us reading to her," said her mother, Nirmal Purewal. "She's like, 'Let me tell you the story.' "

Priya, who turns 5 next month, is younger than most kindergartners but already can name the planets and U.S. state capitals and point out continents on a globe.

The Valley Ranch girl also reads encyclopedias for 10- to 12-year-olds, sings in the Indian languages Hindi and Punjabi and can count to 20 in Spanish.

Her smarts have landed her an appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno, scheduled for Thursday.

Last month, Priya became one of American Mensa Ltd.'s youngest members. Her IQ has been measured between 148 and 170, and she is one of only six U.S. 4-year-olds in the high intelligence society.

So far, the long-haired girl with pink polished fingernails is far from star-struck.

Asked what she plans to do with her Mensa membership card, she answers, "Nothing." And when discussing her trip to Los Angeles, she talked excitedly about visiting Disneyland.

Nirmal Purewal, a former software engineer who now stays home with Priya, started noticing her only child's huge appetite for learning when she was a toddler. The girl knew her alphabet and numbers at 15 months; by age 3, she could recite the 50 states.

Priya invented a board game called Kodan, using shells she first ran across when visiting Hawaii with her parents. As part of the game, players move shells around a board. The game, named after the Indian word for shells, has become popular among her friends in her neighborhood.

When Priya was 2 1/2 years old, she took an intelligence test that said she had a memory comparable to a 7-year-old's, her mother said.

With her daughter constantly asking questions about everything from how doctors close incisions to the workings of the solar system, Nirmal Purewal said, it can be difficult to keep up.

"Sometimes we forget how young she is because of the way she talks," she said.

Priya attends full days at Windsong Montessori School in Irving in a class with first- through fifth-graders.

"We've never had 4-year-olds in that class," Albanesi said. "I can't wait to see where she goes."

Children as young as Priya take special admissions tests that measure their ability to point out patterns, among other skills, said Joan Hiller, national gifted children coordinator for Mensa.

Scientists haven't yet answered the question of how much of intelligence such as Priya's is inherited and how much stems from early exposure to books, maps, globes and other learning materials, Hiller said.

"You can train a child to do a lot, but you can't necessarily give them an insight they don't have to begin with," she said. "In my view, it's always a little of both."